Battling some flu-like symptoms here, or back spasms, or whatever it is Stephen Jackson advised me to say, so I’d better get this written/posted fast…

1–I’m not sure if the 49ers called Peyton Manning first or Manning camp reached out to them, but they’re dancing now and let’s try to figure out the arguments for this potential relationship.

Pros and cons, both ways:

-THE 49ERS ARE THE BEST FIT FOR MANNING… if he’s looking for the team that is set up to win a Super Bowl immediately, no question.

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They might have the best defense in the league, they’re coached by a guy Manning knows & presumably respects, they run a power-offense that wouldn’t put too much pressure on him to win every game, and adding a great QB would seem to be an easy threshold-jumper for them.

If Manning wants to join the best-run organization coming after him, it’s clearly the 49ers. (I’m amazed I just typed that, but it’s true.)

-BUT ONE PROBLEM WITH THAT… Does Manning want that kind of win-the-Super-Bowl-or-it’s-a-failure scrutiny?

I mean, this team already was one or two plays away from the SB. All kinds of weird things happen in every season, there’s no guarantee the 49ers can get back to the NFC title game, whatever they do this off-season.

But if Manning comes to the 49ers and for whatever reason they fail to make it to the Super Bowl, all eyes will be on him. If he gets hurt, it will be his injury that caused it. If he remains healthy and the 49ers lose early, it will be a massive disappointment, all focused on No. 18.

Also, the 49ers just ran into Eli Manning’s Giants in an epic playoff game. There could easily be 2 or 3 more such playoff meetings.

Does Peyton want to be thinking about that all December and January? If he plays his brother in a playoff game, the Super Bowl would be the ideal place, and not before.

Also, after all those years in a Dome, I’m not sure Manning would love throwing at Candlestick.

-MANNING IS PERFECT FOR THE 49ERS… because Alex Smith is at best a solid QB and their passing game can open up if they add a Hall of Fame QB who can be trusted to throw 35 to 40 times, if need be.

The WRs weren’t very good in last year’s playoffs, for sure, but some percentage of that (I’d say a low %, the coaches might say otherwise) was due to Smith’s supreme cautiousness.

When he’s in rhythm, Manning, like a lot of great QBs, can “throw receivers open,” meaning, he can anticipate the split-second when they will be open, before they actually do get open.

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That’s not Smith’s style, and really, after all the mistakes of his early years, that shouldn’t be his style.

It is Manning’s style, once he locks in with the receivers, and I would think Randy Moss, Michael Crabtree and Vernon Davis would be highly, highly motivated to work with Manning throughout the off-season, if he comes to the 49ers.

-BUT ONE PROBLEM WITH THAT… the 49ers are built to win now, and Smith is the guy who has won for them, doing everything Harbaugh and Greg Roman asked of him with total durability.

What guarantees do they have that Manning can make it through the season–or one big hit? They have none.

They have no guarantees that any QB would make it through a season–Smith included–but the four procedures on Manning’s neck are hard to ignore.

Also, Manning is an unquestioned leader, but how do the 49ers know that his strong personality–never had to think about it in Indy–will fit nicely into the 49ers’ good locker room?

Harbaugh is the face of this franchise, with Patrick Willis, Justin Smith, Frank Gore and Davis added in.

If the 49ers go all-in with Manning, then he’s the face for however long he plays in a 49ers uniform. And Moss. That’s an interesting transition there.

–All in all, I think this is a 51/49 deal. If Manning wants to be a 49er, they have every reason to explore that and find a price-point for the right deal.

If Manning just wants the 49ers in the mix to gin up the offers from Denver and Tennessee, or if the 49ers are madly chasing him no matter what, then I think this is a bit reckless.

We won’t know on any of that probably until Monday or Tuesday, or, from the 49ers’ secret point of view, maybe ever.

Joe Lacob will not be pleased at me for joking about this, but this is a fairly interesting NBA double-semi-tank.

The Warriors insist they’re trying to win every game, but if they do go on a massive spill to the end of the season, they still have a shot at getting into the top 7 of the draft and keeping their pick.

And if the Warriors win too many games, gee, guess who gets their No. 1 pick–Utah, of course.

Remember, the last time the Jazz played the Warriors, they randomly didn’t bring most of their back court to the East Bay and lost. Oops!

Currently, at 18-23, the Warriors have the 9th-worst record in the league.

But the 4-9 draft slots are still a jumble (six teams have between 15 and 18 victories), and the Warriors have more road games left to play (14) than any of the bunch except Cleveland, who has the same amount left.

No question, it will take a large amount of Warriors’ losses to do this. They will never say they want to do this. They can’t say it, they can’t aim for it.
The GSWs have to slip under two teams from this group of bad teams–Sacramento, New Jersey, Toronto, Detroit, Cleveland–or AND hope that Portland (21-23) doesn’t keep diving, or Minnesota (22-23) doesn’t falls apart after losing Ricky Rubio.

Don’t look at win-percentage–that was always a wrong way to look at the GSW season, back when they were touting their playoff hopes and now when.. not so much.

Their schedule is so backloaded with road games and back-to-backs, the GSW early record was ALWAYS misleading. They would’ve been worse at the end no matter what they did–extra home games skew your record.

And all the road games at the end will wear the Warriors down, especially with no Curry (if he’s shut down), no Bogut and no Monta Ellis and Ekpe Udoh.

It’s not impossible to get to the 7th slot or lower, is what I’m saying.

(To repeat the rules: The Warriors keep their pick if if it’s 1-7 AFTER THE LOTTERY, so they could finish 8th and jump into the 3rd and keep their pick. Or they could finish 7th and get knocked back to 8th, and lose it.)

Oh, here’s a partial transcript of Joe Lacob talking about a lot of issues after the Andrew Bogut presser…

-Q: What are your feelings after the two deals?

-LACOB: We’re just excited…

You just don’t get the opportunity very often to add something like that. Andrew, he’s a centerpiece and he’s a center. And he’s a good one.

Really good one.. We can argue whether he’s top five, top three, I don’t know… I don’t really care what people call him.

I just know he’s a really good player, a helluva lot better than the Warriors have had here for a long time, probably, all due respect to current and past players.

He’s a great fit for this team. And we had a goal of re-architecting the team. It’s taken us a year-and-a-hal fto put in the penultimate piece to that re-architecture, which I think is Andrew, and along with David Lee, I think we’re set inside.

And we’ve got Curry and Klay Thompson on the outside, two incredible shooters.

All four of them are great passers, which is really unusual. Take a look around, you won’t find a situation where you’ve got such great passers at every position. We think basketball’s a team sport, it’s meant to be played passing the ball, sharing the ball, and I think that the sum of the pieces is going to add up to being a really good team..

[EDIT]

-Q: What does Jerry West feel about this?

-LACOB: He’s ecstatic. This just doesn’t happen every day. It could have taken us three, four, five years to add this piece. When are you going to do it? It’s not going to happen in the draft. It’s not going to happen in free agency unless you get lucky.

We almost got a really good center, but not at this caliber. So, you know, we feel pretty excited about what we’ve accomplished. Now we still have more work to do, but we’re leaps and bounds ahead of where we were from a week ago.
-Q: What medically did you need to know about Andrew?

-LACOB: We did all the typical checks. You can only do what the MRIs and all those types of things show.

Dr. Maloney and the people at Stanford that we’ve brought on here… assure us this is very low-risk. This is a bone, bones heal. There’s no issue here at all.

In some respects, Steph Curry’s injury is something more to be concerned about, because it’s hard to define what the problem is. A bone, you can see it’s healed…

The elbow’s obviously way past healed. It’s not to say he couldn’t get injured again, everybody can get injured. And historically he has been somewhat injury-prone, so that’s a fair assessment.

But we think we’ll do everything we can do keep him healthy and he should be healthy and we’ll go from there.

-Q: You added about $30M in long-term money in these two deals…

-LACOB: Can I ask you a question? Do you care, does a fan care about how much money it is? What do we care about? We care about winning. That’s what we want to do, right?

-Q: What I think fans care about is that you’ve eaten into any future cap room. Is this some response to the fact that you tried to get free-agents last December and maybe that’s just not going to work, so you decided to trade for it?

-LACOB: We tried really hard on free-agency last summer and we came really close. And we had not a tremendous amount of cap room, but we had enough to try to make those plays. And obviously we had to stretch to make that play, as we all know.

We would’ve been in a similar, relatively speaking, situation this next summer. And the crop of free agents, mostly restricted free agents, the big men that were available.

So we looked at that and said, we think our best shot to improve really now was going to be trade. Because draft, yes, there’s some good players. If you get the No. 1 overall pick, you’re probably going to get a good big man. But other than that… it’s a good draft, it’s a deep draft, but I’m not sure there’s anybody like that in this draft.

So yeah, we did a pivot. I think it’s fair to say we did a pivot and said we’re going to do this through a trade, a big trade.

No guarantees you can ever pull that off, and we were very fortunate that we were able to do this.

-Q: What’s the likelihood that you start talking seriously about shutting Steph down for the rest of the season?

-LACOB: No, you’re asking the wrong question, everyone keeps asking that. The question is when will he be healthy? It’s not are we going to shut him down…

Right now, it’s one of those injuries that nobody can really say for sure why this keeps recurring. We need to know, though. So we’ll get another opinion if we have to.

If it requires shutting him down, then we’ll do it. If it doesn’t, if we can get him back to play sometime in the next month, we will.

-Q: Are you comfortable with the chance you might shut him down?

-LACOB: It’s very important that he be healthy. We don’t want to risk further injury…

But any talk or any consideration or any even discussion about shutting him down and getting to the draft pick and all that stuff, that’s, like, ridiculous. That’s completely not in my thinking, Jerry West’s thinking. And I’ve told everyone in this organization, you will not even consider thinking that way.

By the way, you don’t have to tell Mark Jackson that, because he’s a competitor and I’m sure you’ve heard it from him. There’s no way. We want to win every game. I want to win tonight, really badly.

-Q: Why did you trade Monta Ellis instead of Stephen Curry?

-LACOB: I’ll be honest, we would’ve traded either one if we had to, to make the next move for this franchise. Everybody’s trade-able, and Steph knows this, everybody knows this.

I’m not saying we value one more than the other. One may have more value than the other to various teams and you can surmise all you want about that. Only we know the offers we did or didn’t get.

But we really had to make this move to re-balance–I know (some) have pointed towards that, and I think there’s some truth to it. We concluded we needed to re-balance the roster and they were our two best trading chips and one of them probably had to go to get this guy.

-Q: Would you have a discussion about Bogut not playing in the Olympics?

-LACOB: I have not talked to him about that… I’d have to sit down and talk to him and talk to our staff and think it through.

-Q: Mark Cuban says he doesn’t want his guys ever playing in the Olympics…

-LACOB: Yeah, well Mark will say everything very loudly and directly, whatever comes to mind, I guess. But that’s something I’d want to give more thought before I comment on, honestly.

-Q: What was the thinking on the Stephen Jackson deal… Did you just have to get into the first round?

-LACOB: No, I don’t think that was necessarily the case, though that was an objective. I think at the end of the day, we looked at it, not really Stephen Jackson-for-Jefferson, necessarily… we looked at the arch of the whole thing…

I think money’s a contributing factor, certainly we did take on money… I think we’ve got the core pieces now and we can probably get to where we need to with the remaining pieces better through the draft than having some additional cap space.

Unless you’ve got a lot of cap space to go after the premier guy, those very few players, I’m not sure it makes that much difference.

-Q: What other pieces would you like to add?

-LACOB: I think you should talk to Larry about that, or Jerry or Bob… But clearly, we gave up Ekpe Udoh. Obviously we didn’t want to, but you have to trade something to get something.

So we probably have to replace him at some point. We need another big, we need some depth… And the draft is very strong, if you look at it, it’s very strong in four-men, power forwards.

3–Too long. This has gone on way too long. Sorry, but one NCAA tournament tid-bit.

Syracuse is a No. 1 seed that struggled in the first round.

It’s beating Kansas State right now, and may win. But recent history shows that No. 1s that first-round margin-of-victory is a huge barometer for the way a No. 1 and2 seeds will perform the rest of the way.

(Of course losing in the first round–as two No. 2s did yesterday–is an even better barometer.)

In the previous five tournaments, a combined 14 No. 1s and 2s won their first games by 15 points or fewer.

Only one of those 15 teams–No. 2 Michigan State in 2009–went on to the Final Four, losing in the national-title game that year.

Of the other 14, none made the Final Four, and only 4 made it as far as the Elite Eight.

If the pick is top-7 protected this year, does it just mean that the Jazz will automatically get the Warriors 2013 1st rounder, completely unprotected? Or would Utah end up with nothing?

Rony Seikaly

When Lacob says that the draft is strong, it’s clear that his plan is to tank and get a pick. We’ve already traded away two of our starters without replacements foe the year and are benching a third starter, Curry for the rest if the season. The next goal of our tanking plan should be to encourage Nate to shoot more 3s.

Jesus Christ

This years draft the warriors have the top 7 picks protected. Next season is top 8 protected. And after that I think it’s jut a second round pick.

Jesus Christ

Edit, here’s what we owe Utah via NJ

The Warriors are committed to sending the 2012 pick to NJ if it’s not in the top 7. If it is, the 2013 pick comes due, top 6 protected. If that pick doesn’t get moved, the 2014 pick goes, also top 6 protected. If the Warriors don’t ship that pick, then New Jersey gets the Warriors’ second rounders in 2014 and 2016.

Grey Warden

“the 49ers are built to win now, and Smith is the guy who has won for them”

You mean David Akers is the guy who has won for them.

Jesus Christ

This was such an awful traded by Mullen to get Marcus Williams.

Their should be asterisk* next to Mullans number when they retire his jersey on Monday.

Mullen #17 * (traded a 1st round pick for Marcus Williams)

Threeputt

If you believe the 49ers, it’s kind of a funny situation. They said they had an offer on the table for Alex Smith, he could have signed it at any time, and this was even before the free agency period opened. No doubt on the advice of his wonderful agent, Tom Condon, Smith chose not to sign, probably hoping to put the screws to the Niners for a few more bucks. Then free agency opens, other teams show no interest in Smith, and apparently the Niners have withdrawn their offer so they can pursue Manning. Which leaves Alex blowing in the wind until Manning decides what he’s doing. High stakes poker, looks like Alex overplayed his hand. If Manning chooses the Niners, Alex may end up holding a clipboard in Cleveland for a lot less money than he could have had here.

Jim

Thanks, JC.

jscrilla

JC..you might walk on water, but mis-spelling Mullin twice (two different ways) is a bit much. Hey…at least you got the Jersey number right.

Dan

Lacob is right about having a great-passing starting lineup. Unfortunately, I’m not sure Mark Jackson knows how to run/implement a motion offense. Also, disappointed that Lacob misused the word “penultimate”, which means second to last.

Big Suede

I agree threeput- Alex probably got rooked by his agent majorly. The smart move by Smith was to sign the contract before free agency to make sure the Manning/niner connection never happened.

I have no doubt the niners didn’t pursue manning. And I am also sure Condon didnt want Manning going to the niners- Manning is making his own decisions here and he wants to play for the niners.

I think Alex Smith is a decent QB. I would compare him to Jason Campbell- both have problems with consistency and neither is the most accurate- but both respectable. That being said- campbell is making 3.5 million next year. Alex Smith is likely going to make just half of that 8 million he could have had with the niners- what a mistake…

My guess is Manning has exactly one question in mind – can the team I’m going to compete for the Super Bowl over the next 2-3 years. He’s got more money than he’ll ever need – at this point it’s all about the respect that comes from winning the big one. That’s why I think the 49ers are the favorites to sign him. That being said though I don’t think the 49ers will do something crazy and match some ridiculous offer Manning can likely get from Denver or some other team. So the question is – can they come up with a deal that doesn’t insult Manning but also doesn’t ruin the 49ers payroll structure for the next 4 or 5 years. If they can I think the deal will be done.

Big Suede- I think Smith is significantly better than Campbell. That’s why he’ll be making more money.

Joe Knows

Hey guys…you do know that Alex Smith and Peyton Manning have the same agent, right?

There is no way Condon could contractually screw over Alex in favor of Manning. If I was to guess, I think the 49ers contacted Condon about Manning and they are doing their due-diligence; which many in the media were screaming for them to do. If the 49ers called about him, Condon would contractually have to inform Peyton that the Niners wanted to see him work out and that’s what went down.

I’m also confident that Harbaugh has talked to Alex and that’s why he’s laying low while all this is happening. Harbaugh mentioned that not everyone (in the front office) is aligned about Alex being “the guy”, so I’m think Baalke and/or Jed are pushing this Manning interest…*or* this is the way they’re playing it (good cop/bad cop) if they have to go back to Alex to be their 2012 QB.

Big Suede

Geo- you obviously haven’t watched much of campbell play. I would actually give campbell a slight edge. Campbell throws for over 60% completion and averages a qb rating of 84-85.

Alex Smith has mostly had qb rating of much less- last season he was at 90 rating but a huge portion of that is due to harbaugh/romans play calling. We will definately see what happens if Alex Smith moves to another team- but I think as their careers go- Campbell and Smith are pretty similar in skill set.

Daniel Jokelson

Tim,

— I’d love to hear from you an analysis of what the Warriors need going forward, now that they have the big man and some draft picks. What weaknesses do they need to address through the draft? What should they be focusing on doing in time for next season?

Grey Warden

#6 Jesus Christ,

Yes Mullin made a bad deal back then, but it was Larry Riley that was responsible for REDUCING the trade protections for the pick in the original deal in order to push it back 1 year. So instead of owing the pick in 2011 as a lottery protected 14th pick or worse, it was LARRY RILEY who REDUCED it to 8th or worse. So if you want anyone to blame, BLAME LARRY RILEY.

Fire Bob Fitzgerald

While neither QB is great shakes, Campbell is substantially better than Smith.

Grey Warden

This is all on TK’s blog posted like a month ago, but just to give you an idea how much Larry Riley messed up:

Smith is expendable. why? He doesnt make other around him better. ( see Montana in KC beating the sb 49ers with Steve YOung) He needs everything to be perfect around him to play adequately. Now everyone is whinning we need a WR, with the top rated scoring D, probowl RB, and TE, and OL with 3 first rd ers and a probowl center. Wanna bet with PM our “average” receivers get really good really fast? Smith might someday with all the stars in alignment be good enough to win a SB, With PM we are the team to beat in the nfl. /get him a real RG and as the pundits have said, we fighten other teams ala the 80’s. Besides who would you rather have mentoring Kap? Smith or PM ( or maybe hassselbeck)?

milo

Bigger question is if the cheapo Yorks will cough up the dough for Manning. I somehow doubt it.

http://Yahoo! PeteyBrian

If the Warrior’s work hard, they can get top 6 or 7 worst teams in the NBA. If the trainers and front office work in unison. Coach is directed to develop “youth” and re-furbish veterans.

It ain’t easy – like Tim is saying with Utah – everyone’s doing it.

This Warriors season has been essentially over for weeks.

Shut Stephen Curry down for heaven’s sakes.

Re-instill Andris Biedrins as the starting center playing 35+ minutes per game.

Give Tyler, Jenkins, and C. Wright some minutes.

Develop Klay.

Minimize Nate, Rush, Wright, and Lee’s minutes…

Luke mcwarmsky

There’s no guarantee that Manning will finish the season healthy with the Niners.

But it is guaranteed that the Niners will not win the super bowl with Smith as their QB

Hamster Ball

A long , long time ago, in a franchise far away, another coach had to face this same decision, keep the decent QB or go for one with potentially more talent. Steve Deberg was a decent QB, but Joe Montana was a Hall of Fame talent. The Niners now find themselves in a similar situation. Alex Smith is a good QB, but nowhere as near as good as Peyton Manning. The decision to go with Manning is a no brainer. Especially if you think Kaepernick can play in the future. I would trust Harbaugh on this. He is the QB whisperer and smarter than any of us on this.

One thing I think Monte Pool is misreading in this situation is Harbaugh. Harbaugh is really competitive. His loyalty is not to Alex , but to winning a Super Bowl. If he thinks there is enough tank in the gas left in Peyton, you bet he is going to try his hardest to get him. If Harbaugh wins one Super Bowl, then his name becomes legend. Team comes first, even if it means cutting players to improve it.

Bill Walsh and Bill Belechick are great coaches and they were not loyal to their players. Walsh got rid of Ronnie Lott, Jerry Rice, and Montana when he thought they were close to done. Belechick has done the same for the Pats.

Luke mcwarmsky

and greed killed it for smith thankfully. instead of accepting a deal worth more than his actual worth, he declined and tried for more money.

funny thing is if smith wants to sign with the niners, if they don’t sign manning, then he’s going to have to sign for less than the 3/24 originally offered.

hahahaha

niner

agree with #25. did Smith give back his millions when he was the laughing stock of the league? He has produced 1 year ( w turner his stats were average) and he wants Brady money ? If he wants PM money why not have pm? If he really thinks he is being treated unfairly , go to another team ( seattle) without 3 first rd draft choices and a probowl center on the ol. Lets see if he can win 13 games.

Tim

“If Manning just wants the 49ers in the mix to gin up the offers from Denver and Tennessee, or if the 49ers are madly chasing him no matter what, then I think this is a bit reckless.”

Talk about being a Monday morning quarterback. If the 49ers don’t get Manning, it’s reckless. If they do get him, it’s genius! I should learn how to hedge my bets like you!

Grey Warden

Larry Ellison please buy the Grizzlies and move them to San Jose!

Slamma Jamma

JC and others – as Ralph Barbieri says, two things can be equally true. Mullins deal wasn’t exactly brilliant, but given how terrible the Warriors usually are, it was pretty likely they would have held their lottery pick for 3 years and given away two 2nd rounders. Big deal.

Instead of keeping Mullin’s deal as it was- and I love the fact that he did it FOR NO REASON!!! – Riley changed the deal to pretty much guarantee that the W’s would lose a 1st rounder in the coming few years. GENIUS!

This brought to you by the same guy who let Lin go for nothing and drafted Udoh over Monroe when they had just locked up Lee long-term. I do like the recent moves, but Riley is no bueno.

That Man

Niners signed Manningham. And Moss. If the sign Peyton Manning they will have improved at the only 3 positions of weakness last year. They are returning 11 defensive starters. They lost their worst guard in FA, so whoever steps up should be an improvement. They have both All Pro Kickers. I mean, jeez, they will be Superbowl favorites, and I will love every minute of it.
Go Niners

nynotes

The more I read about Joe Lacob, the more I feel he’s clueless… I hope Bogut comes back strong after his countless injuries, but he’s only played 82 games once in his 7 year career and it was his rookie season. Bogut has played in only 182 games in the past four seasons. Numbers usually tell the truth…

http://thewisdomcow.blogspot.com/ The Wisdom Cow

Smith talking with Miami is intriguing, but doesn’t mean a thing. My first impulse was – SWEET! Same agent as Manning, he must know Manning is leaning toward the Niners, so Smith must look elsewhere.

Seconds later, it dawned on me that Caldon may want Tennessee to think the same thing to up their offer, with SF possibly upping their offer to Smith (even if tabled waiting on Manning), to induce Smith to wait on signing with anyone else anyways.

Both are possible, though it at least means Alex thinks Manning coming to SF is possible.

http://ihatemydvr.blogspot.com/ Bigmouth

Statistically, Campbell has been the better QB over his career than Smith.

3rdKing

Choosing between Campbell or Smith is like picking brusselsprouts or split pea soup, you’d rather bypass both. Unless its the only food on the table.

wow for a guy that covers sports you know nothing of what drives a competitor.

Joe Knows

A couple notes…

1) Alex Smith did take a pay cut a few years back (re-doing his contract), so essentially he did give money back.

2) I would never accuse any player of “stealing money”, if the ownership provides head coaches that suck with an upper-case S. There’s a reason why Nolan hasn’t received another H/C shot and ask any beat writer that covered them during Mike Singletary’s reign…he had coaches on his staff with nowhere close to the experience needing to be on a professional staff. His self-prophecy was so out of whack, he hired friend to get paid thinking he would be able to coach over any shortcomings….which is part of the reason they seemed so unprepared during his seasons.

3) The offer on the table for Alex was $8 million a year…which according to the SacBee was in the VERY LOW END of the QB scale. No one with any pride (including everyone here), would sign a contract that was clearly was not a fair deal.

I have a huge concern that Manning isn’t coming and Alex goes elsewhere. I also have a concern that Baalke, Harbaugh, and Jed York aren’t on the same page. Yes, Harbaugh saw Manning work out…but he does have a boss in Jed York (Baalke not so much). “IF” they have to go to Plan C (Colin or some other QB) or Peyton comes and gets gets hurt…and the 49ers miss the playoffs…this organization will be taking a few steps backwards because I truly believe Harbaugh wants Alex.

We’ll see how this all ends up. This is a very critical “intersection in the road” for the 49ers and their strive to be a top team in the NFL again.

DynastyAgainSeenFromGeorgia

Kaepernick has a years experience under his belt to be the QB if needed. He has that tangible to lead the team under Harbaugh to the Superbowl if the Niners don’t get Manning. It is a win win improvement for the Niners either way. Smith was just a place holder at QB regardless of what everyone thought. The Niners will do what ever is necessary to improve every position on the team every year. That is what builds a dynasty just like Bill Walsh did in his time.
Interesting enough that is exactly what the Warriors are doing in building their dynasty. It makes me happy to see that all three of my teams (Niners, Warriors, Giants) have the same goals now.

thebear

I had 1 good season in 7. With some luck, I parlayed a lockout into a starting gig and a sweet comeback season under the tutelage of a QB guru. Showing how easily swayed I am by others, I listen to my agent and decide that I deserve to be paid Brees $ for all the years I’ve presumably been underpaid for my contributions. A week later, I’m wandering around South Beach…not because its a good career move, but because I need to save face. And if the opportunity presents itself, I’m high-tailing it back to the Niners, because I like “safe”. Who am I?

http://twitter.com/mikenewwin @mikenewwin

“(To repeat the rules: The Warriors keep their pick if if it’s 1-7 AFTER THE LOTTERY, so they could finish 8th and jump into the 3rd and keep their pick. Or they could finish 7th and get knocked back to 8th, and lose it.)”

This is exactly the case AGAINST tanking the rest of the season.

However unlikely the scenario – the W’s losing enough games to finish 7th-worst – and then getting bumped to 8th by lottery balls and STILL losing the pick anyway would be VERY Warrior-esque.